A Big Disconnect
Cute undies and shaved legs. Those are the things Diana, a 24-year-old staffing agency manager, makes sure she has every weekend when she heads out to the bars of New York. "Hooking up is something to do until I find someone. It's not a problem meeting a guy and going home with him. It's easy. There's more opportunity for that than for dating," she says of no-strings-attached sex—the perfect guy being someone she has no long-term interest in. ("If I start to crush on him, it gets tougher to have a sexual relationship," she says.) Everyone, she says, is looking for the same thing: random sex. "Play or be played" is how she puts it. "Alcohol is a big factor, huge. It's liquid courage. You don't have any inhibitions: 'I can do this...I can hit on this guy,' " Diana says. She has slept with 32 men in the six years since she lost her virginity, and she doesn't care if anyone tries to "slut-shame" her: "I'm not ashamed of it. Other people can judge, but it's you who ultimately needs to be OK with your decisions."

Still, even Diana is not OK with her all-too-frequent unsafe-sex decisions. Condom fatigue? Pregnancy ambivalence? It's a rational disconnect she just can't explain. While she is "paranoid" and has STD tests every six months, and she gets furious with her friends—four of whom have HPV—who sleep around and don't use protection ("I'm like, 'You are the reason I am paranoid. It's girls like you who spread it around and make it dangerous for me"), she still doesn't always protect herself. "I've definitely made my share of mistakes and continue to do so, usually in the heat of the moment or when I'm intoxicated," Diana says. "The morning after these things happen, I'm sick to my stomach. I feel so bad about making such a stupid mistake. I'm hoping that I don't have to learn the hard way to stop doing it."